Rabbits don’t hang around in springtime when procreation is on the timetable, and by now in mid-April their youngsters, first or second litters of the year, are everywhere.

I had already seen scores of them dashing into the hedgerows for cover as I free-wheeled my bike down the bridleway near Welburn, when I heard it.

The squeal of a terrified rabbit in fear of its life is as heart-rending as it is distinctive, so I dropped my bike and headed towards the sound on foot, knowing that I had a good chance of seeing some predator or other.

Movement caught my eye from the long grass beneath the spreading boughs of a path-side oak tree. A russet-coloured scarf seemed to be flapping in the breeze, only there was no wind; it was the long, thin and seemingly frail body of a rabbit being flung to and fro by a stoat as it twitched and kicked in its last death throes.

Job done, the stoat stood on its hind legs, stared me in the eye as if weighing up our differences in size, and bounded away behind the trunk of the oak tree.

I approached the young rabbit lying serenely on the grass flattened by the recent melee, and examined it.

It was stone-dead but un-marked save for a bloody mark on the back of its neck, where the stoat had bitten clean through its spine – a swift dispatch. The body was warm and limp and its eye wide, black and shining, still brimming with its recent life.

Although young, the rabbit wasn’t that small – probably two or three times the weight of the stoat, a fact which testifies to the skill and power of the little predator in managing to kill its prey so quickly and easily.

Stoats are mustelids, a family of streamlined carnivores which includes ferrets, otters and, perhaps surprisingly, badgers.

The animal that stoats can be most easily mistaken for is the weasel as they are both a similar colour (orangey/brown) and with snake-like bodies designed for hunting in underground burrows.

Weasels are small enough to fit down mouse and vole holes, while stoats specialise in rats and rabbits.

You are most likely to see them whizzing across the road in front of your car, like a furry toy pulled on a string. If you have time try to look closely at the tail as it passes – a weasel has a very short brown one but the stoat’s has a distinctive black tip.

In certain parts of the country winter-time identification is much easier because stoats moult into a winter coat which is pure white to camouflage them in the snow.

Back in January, at the height of the bad weather, I was lucky enough to see one galloping along the top of the snowdrift, high on the moors near the Lion Inn at Blakey.

In this form they are known as ermine and their fur was once prized for the making of royal cloaks – those white-with-black-spots items, familiar from old paintings. The black spots? … stoats’ tails, of course.

Back at the oak tree incident, I knew my stoat would still be waiting so I left the rabbit, retreated a discreet distance and trained binoculars on the spot.

Sure enough, out she came from her hiding place, grabbing her next meal by the scruff of its neck and in a scene reminiscent of the African plains, trotted away dragging her prey behind her.

A rabbit isn’t quite a wildebeest, granted, but I certainly felt that I had been privileged to witness an English hedgerow lioness at work.